


Between Us We Have One Beating Heart

by DrOlShakes



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Friday the 13th Series (Movies), Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Horror, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Psychological Horror, Reader Beware You're In For A Scare, Sandor as Jason Voorhees, Sansa as Carrie, Telekinesis, Telepathic Bond, here for your spooky season needs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:33:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27097393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrOlShakes/pseuds/DrOlShakes
Summary: When Sansa is eleven, she finds a body in the lake. It's down deep, and chained to the bottom, surrounded by long, waving weeds. She knows that she should tell the police, but there is something very comforting about being down in the lake with him, and she doesn't want to leave him. Over the years, that feeling only gets stronger. He becomes her only friend and constant companion. But what will she do when she discovers the terrible secret of the body in Crystal Lake?This fic is my contribution to this year's spooky season! I saw some fanart of Carrie and Jason Voorhees and became inspired!
Relationships: Sandor Clegane/Sansa Stark
Comments: 80
Kudos: 165





	1. Chapter 1

Sansa Stark found the body the summer after she turned eleven. It was far into the lake, and deep, waterlogged down into the slippery, slithering weeds and the muddy bed of Crystal Lake. She had floated out farther than she was supposed to, but neither Aunt Lysa nor Uncle Petyr were watching her. Sansa only glimpsed the body by chance; the sun hit the water in just the right way, the weeds swayed at just the right time, and her thick goggles had not fogged up just quite yet. But because the sun shone, and the weeds swayed, and the cheap little snorkel set was clear, Sansa Stark found the body.

She pulled her head out of the water. She chewed at the plastic of the snorkel. She peaked her head back down. Yes. There it was again. That was a head and those were shoulders and that was most definitely a body. One more peak. It was wearing some sort of mask. Sansa treaded water, considering. 

Finding a body was bad, of course. She should make Aunt Lysa call the police. Sansa frowned. Not that the police were ever much help. They hadn’t done anything about her parents, or Robb, or any of them really. And that would mean talking to Aunt Lysa, which Sansa tried very hard to never do. Sansa peaked her head down again. She had to paddle her arms around so she wouldn’t drift away with the current. 

Maybe a little deeper, just to get a better look. A look wouldn’t hurt. And anyway, maybe she would see something useful that she could tell the police about.

Sansa took a gulp of air and plunged downward. Her strokes were awkward, and her thin legs only propelled her so far, but down and down she went. The lake became much colder so quickly. It was deep here and it was only the turn of summer. Crystal Lake ran deep, and the sun only ventured so far into its waters. Goosebumps prickled up her arms and down her legs as the body slowly came into better view.

Already, Sansa’s lungs were aching. The pressure in her chest built and built, but the panic of losing air was all pushed back because the body swayed just below her. She pushed the slimy lakeweed aside for a better look.

The body was a man. A huge man, dead muscles somehow still bulging out of a ripped jacket and shredded shirt. The black hair on the dead head swayed with the weeds. There was a chain strapped around his chest that dripped down into the lakeweed, probably anchoring the body to the muddy bed. On his face was a mask. It was white, and flat, with red markings, and dappled over with holes. It took her a moment, and then she remembered Robb’s hockey gear. But why would a man in a hockey mask be chained to the bottom of a lake in the middle of nowhere?

Sansa was forced to come up for air. She burst out of the water, gulping and gasping. Her red hair was plastered all over her face and she had to vigorously shake her leg to dislodge a weed. For one horrible moment, she imagined the weed snaking tight around her calf, yanking her down, and chaining her to the bottom of the lake, just like the body with the mask. She ripped the goggles off of her face and wiped away the fog. 

Something brushed her foot! Sansa screamed! Fingers, and then a hand, a cold, cold, cold hand gripped her tight and- 

oh it was another weed. Sansa pushed herself through the water, terrified that the body would somehow rise up only to pull her down into that deep, cold, muddy water. With shaky limbs and ragged breath, Sansa propelled herself towards shore and she tried very, very hard not to imagine the body dogging at her heels. 

***

Aunt Lysa was a drip and Uncle Petyr was a creep. At dinner, after Aunt Lysa made them all say grace and Uncle Petry made his dirty jokes, Sansa pushed the mashed potatoes around on her plate. The green beans were soggy. The steak was rubber. Sansa did not sigh, because Aunt Lysa did not like when she sighed. Sansa took a gulp of water. It tasted like the lake, just a little. Panic flared up in Sansa. Was she drinking body water? Were they all going to get sick and die and Sansa would finally see her family again? 

No.

She wasn’t that lucky.

Sansa did not look down glumly. Aunt Lysa did not like it when Sansa looked down glumly. Instead, she cut diligently through the grey steak, ate each one of the green beans, and choked down three bites of the mashed potatoes. Petyr didn’t eat half as much as her, but he guzzled down three beers so maybe that filled him up instead. Aunt Lysa was glaring at Petyr and the amassed beer cans, and Petyr was glaring back, and Sansa thought that maybe she should have stayed out in the lake with the body, because this much glaring never went well for any of them in this small cabin on the lake. 

Sansa did the dishes. She plunged her hands into the soapy, hot water, and found the wash rag. It squelched in her grip. She wondered if touching the body would also squelch. Sansa dropped the rag and backed up from the sink. Lysa glanced up from her needlework: “Don’t splash water in my kitchen.”

Sansa muttered, “yes, Aunt Lysa,” and made herself walk back to the sink and slip her hands back into the water. This was different from lake. It was hot and there were no weeds to entangle her and there was no body that would squelch under her touch. Sansa briefly glanced over to Uncle Petyr, which was a mistake, because he was already staring at her. She had meant to tell him about the body (had she?) but that would mean talking to him. Sansa looked back to the dishes. No. Not Petyr. And not Lysa. And not the police. 

She couldn’t leave him down there though? That would be a bad thing to do. She couldn’t keep him a secret. What if he had a family who missed him? What if someone had been looking for the body for a very long time and she alone could tell them where it was? What if someone had loved the body very much and missed it very much and could not wait to be reunited with the body, even though the body was just some rotting thing at the bottom of a lake? 

Sansa went to sleep that night conjuring up elaborate scenarios where actually the body was the son of some aging heiress who was so thankful to Sansa for returning the body that she adopted Sansa and whisked her away from awful Lysa and awful Petyr. 

That was not what Sansa dreamed of though. No, in her dreams, the body gripped Sansa tight, tight enough to bruise, and yanked her down and wrapped the chain around her, held her, and the body made her stay down there with him forever. 

***

After morning prayers, and a stilted breakfast, and doing the cleaning up, and her Bible session with Lysa, and after Lysa went to church and after Petyr kicked her out of the cabin so he could work on the novel, and after Sansa sat out on the dock for 20 minutes, she did the inevitable and swam out to find the body again. 

Except she couldn’t find it. It was out near the middle...but not quite the middle...and it was out past the dock by the summer camp, but it wasn’t too far past it. And she was sure she recognized that crop of trees on that part of shore, but the body was lost to her. Sansa slapped the water in frustration and resisted shouting. Instead, she plunged her body down and down, ripping her way through the weeds. He was somewhere. The body was somewhere, waiting for her, and she just had to find it. Somewhere, somewhere near, somewhere right near here, but Sansa couldn’t hold her breath for very long. Sansa was forced to resurface again and again, until she was nearly crying from the frustration.

With a huge gulp of air, Sansa forced herself down into the water. She was almost vibrating with the desperation of finding that hulking form again, that strange mask, and the ragged clothes. 

Nothing and nothing and more nothing. She _could not lose him too_ . _She would not_. Under the water, away from where anyone could hear, Sansa let herself scream. 

Bubbles spewed out around the snorkel mouthguard from her scream, and the lakeweeds burst apart in front of her, forming almost a path. Sansa blinked, and then sputtered as lakewater spilled into her mouth. She surfaced and breathed. Sansa took a ragged breath and submerged again. The weeds were still parted for her. She treaded water, staring at them. They stayed pushed apart. Sansa swam forward, and let her frustration come over again. The weeds continued to move for her. The frustration simmered into exhilaration. Impossible. But the weeds were moving. 

And finally, there he was. Just where she had left him. The body. Sansa surfaced to breathe, and smiled. She had found him. With a deep breath, Sansa dived down and thought very, very hard, _move weeds move move_ and they did. Somehow, they did. The lakeweed unraveled itself from the body, twisting off of his legs and arms, revealing the heavy boulder that was attached to the chain that trapped the body. Sansa had to resurface. She huffed in frustration, and dived down again to look her fill. She noted the black hair that swayed, she noted the broad plains of the chest, the jacket that billowed in the water, grey skin and the coarse hair that covered it. The body’s hands were curled into fists and in his right hand he gripped-

Sansa came up for air. The chill of the deep water was wading into her. But she had seen-

In his right hand, he gripped a long blade, some sort of knife, and even in the dark water, she saw the glint of the sharp edge. Even in death, the body’s grip on the blade’s handle was strong and tight. 

Sansa was forced once again to surface for air. It was really was a drag having to come up every thirty seconds just for stupid air. Sansa shoved her stringy hair out of her face and dived down again. 

She did this over and over. She couldn’t look enough at the body. His legs were clad in dark jeans, his work boots heavy and solid, floating just off of the lakebed. The body, with all the weeds pushed away, astonished her in its size. Sansa was a tall girl for her age, always had been, but she felt like a mouse in front of this body. Her eyes kept drifting, over and over again, to that hockey mask. It was nicked and battered, and it hid his eyes. It hid all of his face. Sansa really, really wanted to see his face. But that meant touching the body and no way was she gonna touch a dead body! Yuck!

Finally, the cold got to Sansa and she was shivering, even though the summer sun was still far up above her. She had to go in, and leave him. But not yet. First, Sansa had to make sure that she could find him again. So that she could tell the police where to find him. She frowned. But how was she supposed to do that? It wasn’t like she could put a big giant X on the water. 

There was nothing for it. She would just have to memorize this part of the lake and lakeshore and come back each and every day until she knew exactly where he always was and never forget. Sansa turned herself in circles and circles, trying to note every tree and rock on the shore. Then, she made herself count every swimming stroke until she got back to the dock outside of their cabin. Sansa was never going to lose the body again. 

That night, after that evening’s Bible reading and lesson, Sansa shuffled up to Uncle Petyr, who was already two beers in. He glanced over at her. Sansa cleared her throat.

“Uncle,” she said.

“Petyr,” he interrupted.

“Petyr,” Sansa mumbled, “what are those really long knives called? It’s all straight on top and then sort of curved at the end?”

Uncle Petyr tilted his head. “A machete?”

Sansa smiled. “Yeah, thanks!” She turned to leave, but Uncle Petyr was too fast, and gripped her by the arm. 

“Where’d you see a machete?” His eyes, blue but fogged, drilled into hers. 

Sansa didn’t even try to pull away. She’d tried that when she first came to live with them and found out that he did not like that at all. Instead, Sansa put on a smile and said, “I was talking to Grenn out by the camp and I saw one in the tool shed.” She thought that that would be believable enough.

But Aunt Lysa had heard her. In what seemed like only a moment, Aunt Lysa had swooped across the living room, her cross stitch forgotten on the chair, and gripped Sansa’s chin. She was pinned in place- chained- by Petyr’s grip on her arm, Lysa’s claw on her face. “Grenn? He’s that new pimpled boy over at the camp grounds?” Her aunt’s voice was shrill. “What are you doing over by that camp, and in that skimpy little bathing suit?”

Sansa shook her head, trying to loosen her aunt’s fierce grip; “I wasn’t, I wasn’t!”

“Liar!” Lysa hissed, and moved her grip to yank her away from Uncle Petyr. “Liar!” She said again, dragging Sansa towards the Red Closet. Sansa began to cry. “You lie to my face, after telling your uncle about being with that boy!” She wheeled Sansa around. “What else have you been lying about? Prancing about in that little suit, making those boys look at you.” Lysa pushed her face up close to Sansa’s, and hissed out a word that Sansa had only learned this summer, “Slut.”

Sansa was fully crying now. “Please,” she wailed, even though she knew that she couldn’t stop any of this. She never could. “Please,” she cried again, trying to claw away from her aunt. Sansa’s eyes flashed to Petyr, but he had already walked away. 

“Slut,” Lysa hissed again, and shoved Sansa fully into the Red Closet. Sansa scrambled towards the door, but it was slammed in her face. Through the door, she heard Aunt Lysa say, “Remember, Sansa, I can see through you to your wickedness, just as God can.”

She heard the key click the lock into place, and Sansa banged her fists against the door. The darkness pooled around her. “Please, let me out, let me out!” She howled, but already Lysa was running through her endless prayers and recitations, her shrill voice penetrating through the thick wood door. 

“Pray with me, Sansa, pray to be kept clean and to not let Eve’s weakness overcome you, pray!”

Sansa crumbled onto the red carpet of the old, musty, horrible closet, and began to mumble her way through the prayers and litanies that Lysa had drilled into her. It would be hours before Sansa would be let out of the closet, if she was let out at all tonight. Eventually Uncle Petyr would return when he couldn’t stand the sound of prayer anymore, and drag Aunt Lysa away. And then there would be shouting, and maybe some banging, and then eventually it would be quiet. Sometimes they remembered to let her out, and sometimes they didn’t. 

That night, they didn’t. Sansa, already so tired from plunging herself ceaselessly into the lake, curled up in her corner of the closet, and fell asleep imagining the body breaking through the Red Closet door with the big _machete_ and taking her back to the lake with him and never letting anyone touch her again.

***

Uncle Petyr worked as a teacher, and so had summers off. But he was working on his great novel, and so always wanted the cabin empty so he could “get some damn peace and quiet.” Aunt Lysa was the secretary at the church, and spent what time she wasn’t working there doing volunteer work with the different ladies’ groups. She had tried to take Sansa along with her at the beginning of summer, but stopped because one day Sansa had been horsing around with some of the other kids and her dress had ridden up a little too far. Aunt Lysa couldn’t be seen with such a slut, and would only take Sansa back once she had learned not to be a little harlot. 

Her aunt’s words.

All of this meant that Sansa had the long summer days to herself. She wasn’t really wanted around here anyway. Sansa had looked at the days stretched ahead of her before they returned to town for the school year as days that she would be forced to spend alone. But the body changed that. 

He became her only friend that first, awful summer. Sansa became obsessed. Not with finding out who he was- that didn’t even matter, not even a little- but with memorizing every little thing about him. She wanted to memorize every little ding in the mask, the precise curve of the machete, each rip in his clothing, and the cracks in his fingernails. 

This quickly became a frustrating task, however. No matter how hard she tried, Sana’s lungs betrayed her. Each moment with the body became an imperative, and having to resurface began to feel like abandoning him. She had to spend so much energy keeping the weeds pushed away with her mind, and her lungs reached their capacity so quickly. But she kept going down to him, and as the days passed, it became easier to find him in the depths of Crystal Lake. 

One night, Sansa woke up in a panic because she was afraid that the body never knew that she was coming back the next day. What if to the body, it seemed as if each time she left, she may never return. And what if something awful happened to her, something so unexpected and so awful, that she never could return and he would just be alone forever because she would never come back? If the body was her only friend, then she must be his only one too. 

The next day, it seemed to take Lysa forever to leave the little cabin. She couldn’t go into the lake until she left and Petyr kicked her out, and maybe that whole time, the body was thinking that she wasn’t going to come back. Finally, finally, Lysa left and Sansa rushed out the back door, dashed down the dock, and dived into the water. It was so easy to find him now, to slip beneath the water, push the weeds aside, and find her body.

She viewed the body with a wave of relief. He was still there, unchanged and constant. Unmoving, except for the gentle sway of the water. Sansa then did something that she hardly ever did; she maneuvered herself to be eye level with the body. She looked deep into the eye slits of the hockey mask, into the dark recesses there, and held herself in place. Then, with slow deliberate movements, Sansa touched her heart, and then waved, and touched her heart again.

 _Hello_. 

And then she felt silly. She was saying hello to a dead body that was chained to the bottom of a lake. She was such a dummy. 

But she kept looking at the body and the massive, solid presence of him, and then it didn’t feel silly at all. And of course she was imagining it, but Sansa was almost sure that she felt the body say _hello_ right back to her. 

When Sansa had to leave him that day, she once again moved herself to be right in front of the body. This time, she waved, and then touched her heart, and waved again. 

_Good bye. I’ll be back._

***

The closing of summer was awful. Sansa had spent so many days with her dear friend, so many long summer hours in his silent, reticent company, and the thought of leaving him for a whole year ate a pit into her heart. Lysa and Petry spent every summer at their small cabin on Crystal Lake, and so she knew she would be back, but leaving her body still felt like a part of her was being ripped out. 

And then, much too soon, it was the last night. The cabin was all packed up, their belongings shoved into battered suitcases, the water and electricity all ready to be turned off. Sansa stared up at the ceiling, sleep not even a possibility. She had done their goodbye ritual with the body the day before, but had not been able to go today because everything was being packed up. Sansa had thought very hard in his direction to explain what a school year was, and that she was not abandoning him to be all alone. She had tried, but there was only so much that you could tell a body.

Sansa turned over, crying silently. It wasn’t fair, the way that people could just come in and out of your life. It wasn’t fair that you had no say over being alone or being loved. She sniffled. She wiped at the snot on her running nose, and started to cry a little harder. No, it wasn’t fair to just be left all alone in a dark terrible place. 

A picture on the wall rattled, rattled, rattled, and then fell to the floor. It landed on the thick area rug with a quiet thudd and did not break.

Sansa sat up, and harshly wiped her eyes. She wasn’t going to abandon him. As quietly as she could, Sansa pulled on her swimsuit, and got out her little snorkel set. She knew that there was a big flashlight in the kitchen drawer. 

Sansa tiptoed through the little cabin, the Red Closet looming at her. So carefully, Sansa pulled out the drawer and yes, there it was, the flashlight. She gripped its shaft and then paused, so sure for a moment that she saw Aunt Lysa’s eyes flashing in the dark. 

But it wasn’t. And so Sansa closed the drawer and made her way out of the cabin and towards the lake.

The water looked black in the night, like a dark oil slick that would choke her. But the lake was so familiar to her now that it didn’t even frighten her at all. She made even, quick strokes through the water. The lakeweed parted for her as it always did now, and she didn’t even need the light to find the body. 

No, the light was so that she could look at him. 

When she found him, Sansa swam all the way around him. A big wide circle, with the flashlight always trained on him. He looked so different in the night. There were no streaks of sunlight in the water to soften the hard lines of the body. The flashlight hit him harsh and garish, and the lakeweed wavered in and out of the beam like slippery eels. Sansa went up for air, cursing her little lungs, and plunged deep down. 

She positioned herself right in front of him, so that she could say hello. 

Her heart paused, and her chest ached.

Through the beam of the flashlight, Sansa could see his eyes. Or, she could see his eyelids, through the holes in the hockey mask. His closed eyes. The body’s eyes were closed. And suddenly, he did not seem dead so much as waiting. 

Sansa had to come up for air. She grinned at the moon, and dove back down. 

And then Sansa did something that she had not done all summer. In fact, it was something that she had tried to tell herself that she very much did not want to do. Sansa swam closer, just a little closer, and touched the body’s hand, the one that gripped the machete. It was cold, and it was wrinkled, and it was grey, and very, very dead. 

Sansa held the body’s fist for just a moment, feeling very much like she was committing the type of horrible sin that Aunt Lysa was always accusing her of. 

Her chest ached with the need for air, but Sansa forced herself to stay down. She pushed herself back from him, almost crying at having to let go. Her lungs needed relief. But she stayed down just a little longer, waving and touching her heart and waving and touching her heart and waving and touching her heart and waving again and again.

_Goodbye, I’ll be back, goodbye. Goodbye, I’ll be back, goodbye. Goodbye, I’ll be back, goodbye._


	2. Chapter 2

That school year, Sansa did not make any friends. It wasn’t on purpose. She wanted friends, but all of the other kids kept away from her. 

That first day of school, Sansa had walked into the classroom with her head held high and her used-plastic flats squeaking on the linoleum. The very nice teacher had introduced Sansa as the new girl, and Sansa smiled as pretty as she could. Nobody smiled back. 

At lunch, Sansa had bucked up her courage- if she could swim with a dead body, she could sit with someone at lunch- and plopped herself down next to a pretty girl with a green bow in her hair. 

“Hi,” Sansa had said, grinning. 

The girl cocked her head: “Didn’t your whole family die in a fire?” 

The smile fell right off of Sansa’s face and the cold of the lake seeped into her all of a sudden.

“Yeah, I heard they all cooked up,” said the girl across from Sansa, leaning in conspiratorially. “I heard that burning people smell just like fried chicken. Did they smell like fried chicken?”

Sansa jolted to her feet, spilling the first girl’s chocolate milk all over the table. “Yuck!” yelled the girl with a bow. “Watch it, freak!” 

But Sansa was already walking away very fast. 

She didn’t try to sit with people at lunch again. 

Instead, Sansa kept all to herself, and tried very hard not let all of the whispering hurt her. Over the year, all of the kids kept twisting and twisting at her story and her family. It went from dying in a fire, to Sansa setting the fire, to Sansa eating her family, to the cops finding Sansa chewing at her little brother’s leg like a drumstick. Awful, terrible, awful things from people who had never known just how awful the world could become and just how quickly it could get that way. 

That was also the only year that Aunt Lysa threw her a birthday party. Sansa had begged and begged her not to, had tried everything she could think of, but Aunt Lysa was adamant. She wanted little Sansa (it was always little Sansa when Lysa was pretending to love her) to have such a special birthday after the terrible year that she had had. It was Sansa’s most fervent and terrible hope that nobody would show up.

But no.

She wasn’t that lucky. 

Dumb Margaery and her dumb green bow was forced to show up by her dumb mom and she was the only one. Sansa sat with Margaery in the musty living room while her mom and Aunt Lysa “caught up” in the kitchen. Sansa and Margaery stared at each other. Sansa picked at the cuff of her moth-eaten sweater. Margaery braided and unbraided her ponytail.

“Would you wanna-”

“Ew, no,” Margaery cut Sansa off before she even began. 

Sansa twisted her mouth all up. She had used to love her birthday. Her mom had made her favorite cake, and her brothers would always play knights and princesses with her, and Arya would always be the evil wizard who had kidnapped her, and then her dad would sit next to her as they all sang happy birthday. His voice was always so much deeper than anyone else’s, and she was his little princess and she had loved them very much and they had loved her very much. 

Sansa, to her great horror, sniffled right in front of Margaery, who groaned. “You don’t have to be such a wuss about it. My mom made me get you a present. You’re such a baby. And it’s just a dumb birthday.” And then, just like she always did, Margaery got a mean glint in her eye and Sansa knew that she was about to be very cruel. “I bet your mom and dad lit the fire themselves, just so they wouldn’t have to deal with such a dumb little baby.”

“Shut up,” Sansa scrambled to her feet. “Shut up, shut up! You don’t know anything!”

“Aw, the baby’s gonna cry!” Margaery laughed. “Your parents thought you were a big dumb baby and FWOOSH!” Margaery jumped up, swinging her arms high in the air, “they just burnt up!”

“No, no, no,” Sansa howled and clawed at her own hair. She yanked out a clump and Petyr’s books started to fly off of the bookshelf. “You just shut up!” The pictures started to rattle on the walls. 

That mean glint in Margaery’s eyes flushed over with fear. “You’re a freak,” she stuttered out, backing away from Sansa. “You’re such a freak!” And then, made brave in the way that cruelty can make someone brave, Margaery’s mouth turned up, “You’re such a freak that your whole family burnt right up just to get away from you.”

Sansa let out a guttural howl, one from the deep pit of her stomach, and Lysa’s fine crystal fell from the hutch against the wall. 

Aunt Lysa launched herself into the room, her eyes going wide at the sight. And then she was slapping Sansa, who just could not stop screaming. Margaery was being hustled out of the door by her mother, but never once did Margaery, and that cruel, awful gleam, look away. 

Sansa had to clean it all up. Her eyes were raw from crying, and her cheeks burned from the slapping. She swept up the crystal, and put each book away, and was forced to throw out the limp cake that Aunt Lysa had made. When Lysa gestured Sansa towards the Closet, this one’s carpet was just plain beige, Sansa didn’t even protest. She sat numbly down on the floor, and Lysa shut the door. 

It was dark. And it smelled. 

Sansa waited for Lysa to begin the prayers, but there was only silence. She knew from the shadow at the bottom of the door though that her aunt had not walked away. Sansa waited. Finally, Aunt Lysa spoke, “I thought you were a miracle when you were the only one left alive. A little miracle to come into my life after all my praying. But you’re not, are you? It was the fires of hell that brought you to me.” Lysa paused. Sansa cried, just a little. “Pray with me, child, and maybe we can loosen you from those demons.”

Sansa prayed with her aunt but she didn’t have much hope.

***  
For the rest of the year, Sansa put her head down and did her homework and got good grades and never spoke to anyone, except when Lysa had her do her prayers, or, more and more frequently, when Petyr would make her read his novel out loud. Her voice became quiet and creaky from disuse. 

But not her lungs. No, not her lungs. Those Sansa trained and worked hard. She had one friend in this whole ugly world, and she could barely spend time with him. It started with holding her breath in the bathtub. Sansa would screw up her eyes and then dip her head down and then count. First to thirty, and then to forty, and fifty, and then eventually, all the way up to sixty, and then more. This took a long time, and more than once, Sansa burst out of the tub gasping and feeling more than a little light headed. She had to be very careful not to splash though, because that just made Lysa mad.

Sansa kept at this, practising each day. Sometimes she would make herself hold her breath as she walked through the school halls. She would start at one end of the hall, and walk slowly all the way to the other end, keeping her face calm even as her lungs ached. She practised when she walked home. She practised as she did the chores, as she sat alone in the Closet when Lysa and Petyr forgot all about her, and during the sermons at church. 

At night, Sansa would close her eyes and conjure up her friend. There he was, solid and permanent, huge and unmoving, and perfect. In her mind, Sansa was able to sit next to him for hours. Sometimes, she would pretend that he would suddenly come alive and then they would run away to some place where no one could find them. Most of the time though, Sansa only dreamed that they could be next to each other, undisturbed and peaceful.

But as the months passed, a fear crept into Sansa’s mind. At first, it was only that the body would not be there when she came back. She started to scan the local newspaper each day, terribly afraid that a headline would read, “mysterious body found at bottom of lake, carted away.” 

But then, as her mouth moved through the motion of Lysa’s prayers, a second, much more horrible fear, occurred to her. What if she had made him up? What if there had never been a body? How had no one ever found it but her? What if he had never been there at all? A desperate mind of a desperately lonely girl who made up a whole dead body because she couldn’t make a single real friend?

It was this fear that gripped her and stayed with her all through the Spring, and made her both dread and long for the summer months. She desperately needed the body to be real. He was her friend. He had to be there, because if he wasn’t, then it really did mean Sansa was a freak. As summer drew closer, and Lysa and Petyr and she began to pack up the house in town, Sansa forced herself to stay down longer and longer in the tub. Once, she stayed down so long she got a nosebleed and had a headache for hours. 

And then, finally, they were at the cabin.

Sansa endured the unpacking. She endured holding the flashlight for Petry as he tooled with the electrical box and turned the water on. She endured cleaning out all of the spiders and airing out all of the bedclothes. Through all of this, Sansa glanced longingly at the lake. She caught it in glimpses through the cabin windows and smelled it on the breeze. 

“Can I go in the lake?” she asked Aunt Lysa, after all of the bags were brought in and all of the dishes had been cleaned of their dust. Lysa looked at her suspiciously, which was starting to be the only way that Lysa ever looked at her. “To cool off?” Sansa added. 

“Fine, but be back for supper,” Lysa agreed.

Sansa couldn’t help the smile that broke out over her face. “Thanks,” she said, and bound to her room to change. 

Sansa soon realized that she had been a fool for fearing if she would have forgotten how to find him after all this time. Her eyes knew their landmarks immediately, and more than that, her muscles remembered. Her arms and legs carried her and her heart far into the lake, and her mind gave their own familiar push against the weeds. 

And then there, she glimpsed him, finally, her body. Unmoved. Unswayed. Untouched by the seasons or the erosion of the time. Warmth spread through her, at deep contrast with the cold of the lake. Sansa plunged herself into the depths and swam right down to meet his gaze. She touched her heart. She waved. Sansa touched her heart. 

Hello. 

***

That was how the next few years passed; during the school year time moved intolerably slow, and during the summer intolerably fast. Sansa kept her head down at school, her head down at home, and held her breath. After several summers with the body and dealing with the frustration of her weak lungs, Sansa dedicated herself to two pursuits; she would learn everything that there was to know about Crystal Lake, and she would hone her body’s strength. 

The latter was easier than the first. Sansa spent her nights locked up in her room doing endless reps of push ups and sit ups and she spent lunches running around the track at school. Sure, she got weird looks, but she was always getting those anyway. The next time she saw her body, Sansa would be able to stay with him so much longer. 

But researching Crystal Lake turned out to be much more difficult. Crystal Lake was just the next town over, but Sansa found frustratingly little about it in the school library. After a week of fruitlessly searching, Sansa did something that she had not done in a very, very long time. She walked up to the desk in the school library, cleared her throat, and spoke to a stranger: “Excuse me?” The librarian turned around and smiled.

“Can I help you?” she asked, the smile still in place.

“Do you have any books on Crystal Lake?” Sansa asked. Her heart was pounding, and her palms were sweating, and a terrible fright was bubbling up in her chest. Even asking this felt like she was screaming out that she had found a body.

The librarian’s face scrunched up. “Well, that’s not a request you get every day. Let me see,” she said, and walked out from behind the desk, gesturing to Sansa to follow. “I think we may just have one, but you would probably have more luck at the public library.”

The public library may as well have been Mars, Sansa thought, for all that Aunt Lysa would let her go there. 

The librarian stopped in front of the small Nature section and ran her finger across a few titles. “Ah, here,” she pulled out a thin blue book. She handed it to Sansa. Quiet Water: New Jersey Lakes. “Sorry we don’t have more. You really would have better luck at the public library.” 

Sansa did check out the little book, but it was next useless. All it told her about Crystal Lake was that it was small, freshwater, and full of weeds and fish, and she knew all of that already. It certainly did not mention a dead body with a machete. 

Sansa began to contemplate the public library. The only public thing Aunt Lysa liked was church. But maybe Uncle Petyr would take her. She would need a reason why though. 

This stumped Sansa for a while, but then her English teacher handed her a golden opprotunity one day- a research paper where they had to use the microfilms and microfiche at the local library. Perfect. It couldn’t be more perfect. She had an excuse to be at the library for hours, and not even Aunt Lysa could tell her no! She could even maybe go for more than one day! 

The library blossomed open before her. It wasn’t a big library, not like the one that her mom and dad used to take her and her siblings to, but it would do. It had the familiar hush that she remembered from libraries, and it smelled nice. Sansa was grinning ear to ear. For the first time in such a long time, Sansa felt airy and free, buoyant almost. With a confidence that sat ill on her shoulders, Sansa marched up to the information desk. A kind, bland-faced woman smiled at her. Her name tag read Brienne. 

“How can I help you?” Brienne asked.

Sansa had rehearsed this all last night, and didn’t even stutter when she said, “I’m looking for books or newspapers about Crystal Lake.”

What she had not expected was for the librarian’s smile to instantly drop and a cloud to come over her face. Brienne sighed: “You’ll be wanting to know about the murders then?”

“Oh,” Sansa stuttered, off-keel. But she did not want Brienne to know that she was thrown, so she said, “Yes,” and then belatedly, “please.” 

“Right,” Brienne said, and pulled out a notecard and piece of paper. She scribbled down a series of reference numbers. “There’s always a few of you. I’m guessing you’re in Ms. Mordane’s class. She always does that “local newspaper” essay, has for years.” That was not Sansa’s teacher or assignment, but she didn’t correct the librarian, in case that meant that Sansa would not be able to find out about the murders. “Okay, here’s what we’ve got,” Brienne said, and handed the notecard to Sansa. 

“Thanks,” she murmured, dipping her head down and then rushing away towards the aisles of books.

Sansa started with the microfilm. She got the little reels of film from the cabinet and then sat herself down at one of the stations. She put in the reel. She took a deep breath.

SUMMER CAMP MURDER: MASSACRE AT CRYSTAL LAKE LEAVES EIGHT DEAD

It was awful. Seven years ago, a killer had cut his path through the local summer camp at Crystal Lake. A masked killer. A masked killer with a machete. 

There was one survivor, a boy named Mycah, who had managed to escape the killer, and had told the police all about it. 

Sansa’s lungs ached. She spluttered, coughed, hadn’t even known she was holding her breath. 

She flipped to the next article. It was also about the murders, this one with a horrible awful picture of bodies under sheets and a young man sitting on an ambulance. Sansa turned the dial to the next article. This one was from a week later and it had a picture of the long gash on Micah’s back. 

What Sansa had not expected, was that there was more than one spree of murders. As she hastily switched from article to article, and began another reel of microfilm, she discovered that there had been two. Not eight dead. Not even ten dead. Thirteen people were murdered. By a man in a hockey mask with a machete.

She came to the last article, and just as the whole afternoon had gone, Sansa found something that she had not expected. It was revealed to have been Micah the whole time. Apparently, Micah had returned to Camp Crystal Lake the next summer and murdered teenagers dressed up in a hockey mask and wielding a machete. There were two survivors of this killing spree, and the first was a girl who had managed to kill Micah with his own machete. But that was not the survivor that Sansa paid attention to. No, the second survivor, a crazed boy who, the article noted, was now stashed away at some mental hospital, would not stop insisting that he had plunged the real killer to the bottom of the lake with a boulder and chain, and that Micah was just some copycat.

The authorities did not believe him. They had their killer. They had a witness. They had Micah. 

But Sansa, cursed as she was, knew the truth. She had found him, the real killer. She had spent hours in his company, had felt loved and safe, and had drawn comfort and peace, in the presence of such a demon. This killer had been her truest and only friend for the past four years. 

And she still did not know his name. 

Sansa poured over each of the articles again, combing through them for any detail about the real killer that she may have missed. Different survivors talked about his height, his size, his fearsome horrible presence, the sheer strength of him, the dripping black of his hair, and his ruined and ragged clothes. But Sansa knew all of that already. She knew it with such a powerful intimacy. She glanced scornfully at a picture of Micah; as if such a boy could compare to her body. The police were fools for believing he could have ever been more than a copycat.

Then, tucked away is an old newspaper article, was her prize, the thing that she had so desperately longed for. In an article about the first opening of Camp Crystal Lake nearly ten year ago, was an interview with a woman who told the reporter about her drowned son. Several years before the camp opened, her son, a boy so bullied that he hated the world and only loved the lake, had been accidentally killed by a group of teenagers in a fire. He had been wearing his hockey mask. They had hidden his body in the lake.

Sandor Clegane. 

The boy in the story wasn’t the right age to be the body. He had just been a child when he was killed. But it didn’t matter. Sansa read the article, and she knew, she knew with utter certainty, that she had found his name. In the cozy silence of the public library, Sansa let her tongue roll over the sound of his name. Sandor. Sandor. It was only a whisper, but her body was alight with the intensity that the name carried with it. 

A child who had died in a fire and hidden in a lake. A demon who had killed 13 people.

And he was Sansa’s best and dearest friend. 

***

The first day of summer, Sansa sat on the rickety dock outside their cabin for a very long time. Aunt Lysa had gone to the church. Uncle Petyr had shut himself in his study. Sansa was 16. She was muscled and lithe, and incredibly alone. Sansa held her mask and snorkel in her hands, and kicked her feet in the water. She could hold her breath for a very long time now. She hadn’t stopped practising, even after she found out about the body. About Sandor Clegane. The water was cold on her feet. It was only the very beginning of summer. The air still had a crisp edge to it. Sansa knew that if she slipped into the water, goosebumps would prick up all over her, and her lungs would go a little tight at the shock.

But she did not slip into the water. Instead, Sansa stared out over the deep blue water, under the light blue of the sky. She knew exactly how many strokes it would take for her to reach the body, had known for years now. She knew exactly how to find a mass murderer. 

Sansa frowned. A cloud passed overhead and she shivered.

He must be cold down there, her body. He must be so cold all the time. He had been down in the lake for eight years, and he had been down there alone for all of that time. Alone, in a deep muddy dark, with only the slithering lakeweed to keep him company.

Except for Sansa, of course. She had kept him company for years. She had loved him tenderly, had cleared the lakeweek from the base of the boulder that kept him down, had touched him countless times. Sansa had never recoiled from him. Not even when she was just a sprout of a thing at 11 years old. And, most importantly of all, Sansa had promised him last year that she would come back. 

Tears welled up in her eyes. She had promised him, had touched his hand like every other year, and touched her heart, and waved goodbye and promised him that she would be back. And though God would damn her for it, she missed him. That was the awful truth of it. Sansa, even after finding out who the body was, had missed him. 

All year, each day, every day, Sansa crept through her own life. She did as Lysa told her, endured her flights of rage that still so often ended with Sansa crying in the dark in the Closet. She endured Petyr’s eyes trawling over her growing body. At school, she was the subject of jeers and bullying and the senseless anger of teenagers. She was called freak by her classmates, and slut by mother’s sister, and felt as a pinned butterfly to a board under her uncle’s gaze. And there was a horrible anger growing inside Sansa that she tried very hard to ignore. There was a yawning, gaping dank pit inside of her, an ugly thing, that she was very afraid of. Something very awful was brewing in that pit, roiling inside her gut.

It was not the quiet of the lake that Sansa missed. She had tried, in the months after her discovery, to believe that it was just the heaviness and silence of the water that she wanted. But that was a lie. There was one person in this whole world who had never hurt Sansa. Who hadn’t even ever wanted anything from her. And that person sat chained, dead, to the bottom of a lake, and had killed over a dozen people. 

In the end, though, it was the promise that made her slip into the water. Sansa Stark, when she was eleven, and then twelve, and then thirteen, fourteen, and last summer at fifteen, had promised Sandor Clegane that she would come back to him, and it was a promise that Sansa, in all her grief, could not bear to break. 

***

Sansa swam down to meet the body. She swam all around him, assessing him for change. It had been a strange comfort before that he never seemed to change, or rot, or decay, but it was a disturbing knowledge now. His clothes had frayed, but that hard body, and the grey skin, had not. More than ever, Sansa was disquieted by the sense that maybe this body was not dead, but only waiting. Sansa thought she knew now what he might be waiting for. Finally, she came to the front of him and was met with the old, worn, and familiar mask. She paused. Sansa put her hand to her heart, and then waved, and pressed her hand to her heart again. 

Hello.

She half expected the body to leap into life at this, had not even realized that her heart was beating a terrible and hurried rhythm in her chest. But the body was as still and immutable as ever. Sansa could not tell if it was relief or disappointment that swept through her. 

She surfaced and stayed up until she got control of her heart rate. Sansa had not wasted her those precious few days of freedom at the library. The actual assignment had been simple, and Sansa had braved lying to her aunt, saying she needed another day, so that she could flip through all of the microfilm again. She had also discovered one single book on free-diving. Reading it had unlocked a whole world for Sansa. She planned to spend the summer mastering the technique, tantalized at the prospect of spending a whole ten minutes underwater at a time. And heart rate was key to that.

Sansa slowed her breath, and her heart, steadily. She waited for anger, disgust, or even fear to grip her, at the thought of a killer lurking down below her, but none came. Sansa let her legs drift up, and she floated on her back. The sky was nearly empty of clouds. She closed her eyes for just a moment and, unbidden, a smile came to her lips. 

Sansa went down again, down into the deep of the lake. As she had done each previous year, Sansa yanked at the lakeweed that surrounded the body. Around Sandor. The body? No, Sandor? Either way, she yanked at the lakeweed to clear a perimeter. She could easily keep the weeds at bay with her mind now, but why bother when she could just thin them out. After doing it for so many years, the perimeter was basically established anyway. Once that was done, she could seat herself on the boulder beside the body...Sandor. She could sit on the boulder beside Sandor, until her lungs forced her to surface again. 

With the weeds gone and a fresh breath in her lungs, Sansa looked up at Sandor from her perch on the boulder. She was holding the same chain he was wrapped in to anchor her down. She had started doing this the summer that she was thirteen. It had seemed a horribly taboo thing to do, at the time, but now it was the same as gripping a doorknob or a bannister; it was something meant to be held. She had felt the same way about the boulder, but its rough surface was familiar enough to her now to be comfortable. With the weeds gone, the sunlight could reach the two of them down here, and it was pleasant to sit down here in the heavy water with her friend. 

Her friend, the mass murderer. 

Sansa’s peace broke. The gleam of the machete was at her eye-level. In previous summers, her eyes had just passed over the machete as simply a weird quirk about her friend. But now it almost seemed to vibrate in its violent nature. There was no blood on it, not after so long in the water, but it was so easy for Sansa to imagine it hacking into a body, hacking it apart. From the very first time that Sansa had seen the blade, she had known that it was still sharp. And there wasn’t a flake of rust on it. Six years in a dank lake, and not a flake of rust. Sansa reached out slowly, so slow, a single finger extended towards the blade. The edge of it begged to be touched…

Sansa rocketed herself up to the surface. She broke the water like a geyser and heaved in a gulp of air. She buoyed in the wake of her splash and shuddered. 

That, maybe, had been too far. 

After a hard battle with her heartbeat, Sansa lowered herself again to sit on the boulder beside the body. He, of course, had not moved. Sorry, she thought at him, for all the good that it would do. 

That afternoon, as it bled into evening, Sansa stayed down with Sandor Clegane at the bottom of the lake. They kept each other company, as they had for many years; it was quiet, and it was cold, and there was the great force of the water pressing on them both, but it was a great comfort. Sansa settled into that comfort. She had been faced with a decision, to return to this wretched body or not, and once you made a decision like that, you had to make your peace with it.


	3. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An Interlude, and a Change

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so so so much for reading, and commenting on, and liking this story. I had no clue if anyone would read it, and it's been such an incredible experience to have people respond so positively to my weird little story. I want to apologize for the inconsistent updates. I'm a grad student and a TA, and trying to facilitate a successful online semester in a pandemic is a lot like throwing oatmeal at the wall and hoping it sticks.
> 
> This chapter is brief, but I thought you guys would love to see the direction this story is going in.
> 
> Thank you all again for your wonderful response. I couldn't have asked for better.

That summer was filled with boundless joy for Sansa. The more her uncle drank, the more her aunt stayed out of the house, and the more time Sansa could spend in the lake. She soaked up the summer days, luxurious in her solitude. No Margaery to call her a freak, no teachers getting frustrated when she was too nervous to talk in class, no girls laughing at her old underwear in the locker room, no boys trying to push her around, or worse, trying to look down her shirt. Sansa spent the year like a wraith, barely there and never wanted, but out here in the summer, with the tall perimeter of trees and the vast expanse of water, Sansa was a queen in her kingdom. 

Sure, there were other swimmers at the far end of the lake, and some folks were rebuilding the summer camp, and there were always a few boats out, but none of that could touch Sansa. It was all so far removed from her life on the lake that it felt like she was simply in a different world. Each day, Sansa would work on her breathing, training both her heart and her lungs to allow her to go longer without air, to go deeper in the water. 

Sansa began each day the same. She would swim out to Sandor, go down and say hello, and then come up and hold her breath for at least three minutes, just floating right above him. She let her body become totally relaxed as she watched him. The dark strands of his hair moved with the unseen current, and his body would sway ever so gently as the natural buoyancy of his body tried to float him to the surface, stopped only by the heavy chain and the boulder. After the three minutes, Sansa would flip over and rest. She would let her body be carried with the current to wherever fate would dump her that day. Some days it carried her far and swift away from Sandor, and some days not very far at all. The goal, though, was that no matter where the lake shuffled her off to, she needed to find her way back to him. When she felt like she had floated long enough, Sansa would fill her lungs and then dive down to find him. He was her north star. 

The lake beneath the surface was like an alien planet. Or maybe it was more accurate to say that it was like the planet Earth, but decimated. The lake bed was littered with the remnants of human life. There were countless beer cans, countless bottles, dozens of sunglasses, scraps of clothing, bathing suits, tangled fishing line and sharp hooks. The muck and foliage of the lake had grown over the garbage, claiming it for its own. Through the haze of the water, and the muffled sound surrounding her, all of that refuse seemed to belong to a dead planet, it’s inhabitants long gone. Sansa, and the fish, and the turtles, and the insects, and Sandor, were the only things left alive. 

Sometimes Sansa would take things back to Sandor. If she found a pretty rock, or a snail shell, or a shiny bobble of bait, she would store it in the little jar on her belt that she had taken to wearing, and then lay it below Sandor’s floating feet. She spent time each day cleaning off the little gifts she brought him, clearing off the sand that the night’s current pushed over them. After a while, in Sansa’s mind, it started to look quite pretty, like a place that somebody may actually want to be. 

One day, though, Sansa drifted more than she had meant to; she had been caught up in a very pretty fantasy of having her own little home just to herself on the lake. After a moment, a noise caught on her periphery, and after a moment longer, she realized that it was a shouting, and finally that it was shouting meant for her. Sansa jolted up right in the water, looking around wildly for the owner of the voice. With a sinking feeling, Sansa realized that today’s current had led her much too close to the ruined-but-being-rebuilt summer camp, and that a pair of teenagers were shouting at her from a little ways off in the water from a sailboat.

Sansa was very very tempted to just duck down into the water until they all went away, but that was the trouble with teenagers, wasn’t it? They just didn’t go away. Instead, Sansa lowered her face half down into the water, holding her breath, and watched the two girls. They were trying to wave her over, she realized.

She could leave.

But what if they followed?

But if she stayed, she would have to talk to them.

But if she left and they followed, they would maybe look for her again later, and they may find out many things that they shouldn’t, and that was unacceptable.

“Hello!” yelled one girl.

Sansa made herself rise up, and wave. 

“Come on over,” shouted the second girl. 

Sansa cleared her throat, her legs felt leaden, and her chest ached. “Okay,” she croaked, pushed her goggles up, and made her limbs move. She crept closer and closer to the boat; it loomed over her. 

“What are you doing in there? Don’t you know this is a boat lane?” asked the first girl, whose blonde hair was tied up in a ponytail. 

Sansa opened her mouth to answer, but was caught off guard when the girl reached down a hand to her: “C’mon, I’ll give you a hand up.”

Sansa Stark had not been touched by another human being in a very, very long time. Lysa pulled her by her hair, and Petyr stayed far away now. This was a hand, a person’s hand, a real person’s hand, reaching out to Sansa. That person was smiling. 

Sansa smiled back, feeling very shy and very silly, and said, “okay,” in a too-quiet voice, and took the girl’s hand. 

Both of the girls on the boat pulled Sansa up. She tumbled over the side of the sailboat, and they all fell over in a jumble of limbs. The two girls laughed, and Sansa found her smile was staying put. 

“Gosh, you’re pretty far out here, aren’t you?” the second girl said, and then, “What are you doing all the way over here?”

Sansa’s tongue felt like cracked rubber, left out in the sun and weak with misuse: “I was just...exploring. I like to see the lake.” Sansa stood near the edge of the boat, and wrapped her arms around herself. 

The first girl’s nose wrinkled up. “Why? There’s nothing down there but a bunch of garbage.”

Sansa blushed and made herself speak again, “some of it is interesting garbage.”

The second girl laughed. Sansa had never made someone laugh before. Laughed at, sure, but never made someone laugh. “What sort of stuff?” the girl asked.

Sansa hesitated, thinking about what she could possibly tell them. “Well,” she started, and had to pause again because her heart felt like it was going to leap out of her throat. “There’s at least seven bikes down there, and I once found the whole front bumper of a car.” The girls were grinning at her, like they expected more, so Sansa made herself add, “and there’s a bunch of cool snail shells.” She unhooked the little jar from her belt and showed it to them. 

“Far out,” said the first girl, peering into the jar. She glanced up quick at Sansa, eyes piercing, and then she went back to smiling. “You’re not from around here, right? I don’t think I’ve seen you at school.”

Sansa shook her head: “I’m from over in Chamberlain, just the next town over. My- aunt and uncle own a cabin across the lake.” Sansa vaguely gestured in the direction.

The second girl’s jaw dropped: “And you swam all the way out here?”

Sansa wrapped her arms around herself tighter, “It’s not so far.”

“Well look, as an official lifeguard at Camp Crystal Lake, I can’t just let you swim in the boat lanes. You could get hurt!” said the first girl cheerfully. “And if you haven’t got anything else to do, and if I can’t let you back in the lake, you might as well just hang out with Mya and me.” Her grin was big. “You can tell us all about the secret treasure of Crystal Lake.”

“Just make sure you don’t run into Micah and his big machete down there!” added Mya, with a twinkle in her eye.

Sansa went numb all over, her gut flipped, and her nails bit into her palms. The wood of the boat creaked. “What do you mean?” Sansa made herself ask.

“Now you’ve done it-” said the first girl, smacking Mya on the arm. 

“Quit it, Randa, that hurt,” Mya hissed.

Randa turned to Sansa: “It’s just some dumb urban legend.”

“It’s not a legend! My cousin told me-”

“Oh, your cousin doesn’t know shit,” Randa said, before continuing, but she had lowered her voice as if telling a secret. “Legend says that eight years ago, one of the old camp counselors went totally crazy and killed like ten people. They all worked over at the camp, which is why it was closed for so long. Some people say that the killer, Micah, got killed...but no body was ever found. And others say,” Randa leaned in closer to Sansa, “that he swam down to the bottom of the lake and is just waiting, and waiting, for the camp to reopen, so he can kill again.”

Sansa stared at the two girls, utterly unsure of what to do, or what to say, and so she didn’t say anything. Mya broke the tense silence by groaning and shoving at Randa, “Look, you didn’t have to scare her! She was just in the water!”

“You’re the one who brought it up!” Randa retorted, giving her a soft shove back. “I’m sorry, okay,” she turned to Sansa. “Everybody here knows it’s just a story anyway.”

Unable to help herself, Sansa said, “but they did die, right? Those kids really were killed?”

Randa and Mya glanced at each other, and then both of them shrugged. “Yeah, it was like a whole thing. There’s a big memorial every year. But nobody likes to talk about how they died, just that they died.”

“Has anybody ever gone looking for him- for Micah? In the lake?” she made herself ask.

“Ew, no. There’s totally a grave for Micah in town- it gets vandalized all the time. He’s not really down there. People just like to say he is to scare little kids.”

Relief washed over Sansa. Sandor would be safe then. “I guess it is a pretty scary story,” Sansa said belatedly. “And you’re not scared working at the camp?”

Mya and Randa were both quiet for a moment, looking at each other. “Sometimes, at night,” Mya finally admitted. “It’s too quiet.”

Randa shook herself and leapt to the steering wheel of the boat. “Yeah, but that will change in a few days when the kids get here. Then we’ll be begging for some peace and quiet.” She looked at Sansa. “Wanna get some lunch? There’s tons of food at the camp.” 

Sansa opened her mouth to decline, to make up some excuse but...after all, why not? These girls didn’t know a single thing about her, or her family, and had been nice so far. Sansa, feeling as if she were about to jump off a cliff, nodded her head yes. 

***

She went to tell Sandor all about it in the middle of the night. She had had to sneak out again to the lake because Randa and Mya had insisted they take her home. Sansa had given them the wrong house, of course- she couldn’t let either Petyr or Lysa see her with other people- but that had meant that she did not say goodbye to Sandor and tell him that she would be back. That was not just unacceptable, but an absolute impossibility. Sansa had to say hello, and she had to say goodbye. The axis of her world turned on that ritual and to abandon it once would be to abandon him; an impossible and horrible and cruel thing. 

Sansa had not sat in the dark with Sandor since that last night of their first summer. Although she came back to the memory often, she had somehow forgotten just how...alive...Sandor felt in the deep pit of dark water, with the spray of the flashlight on him. She had meant to tell him all about Randa and Mya and eating sandwiches on the beach, and how nice they were, and how they didn’t seem to mind that she didn’t have much to say, and even how they had invited her back. But Sansa was arrested by the sight of him, by the sight of his closed eyes in the pits of the mask. 

The mask. The woven straps of it were pulled taught across the back of his head, pinning down some of his hair. The edges and planes of it were free from the algae growth that covered most of the items she found in the lake. The mask did its job well; Sansa could not make out the shape of his face, or had any clue what he might look like under there. For most of her life, Sansa had not even really bothered to wonder. The mask was his face and his face was a mask. 

But now, Sansa wondered. She wondered if it would be wrinkled and awful from being under water for so long. Or maybe it would be strangely smooth, like his dead hands. She wondered if all of the skin would come off if she tried to remove the mask. She wondered, intensely, if his eyes would finally open if she touched the mask. Sansa wondered. 

She had to go up for air. Sansa’s ability to hold her breath was much strengthened by now, but it was still frustrating to be forced to surface. The night air was cool, and the moon was just a splinter in the sky, barely giving off any light. The sky was a wild mess of stars. Sandor lay in the depths below her. Sansa lowered herself down again into the water and beheld him. 

She swam closer, close enough where he, in a better world, could have wrapped his arms around her. She swam right up close and gently swirled her arms in the water to stay in place. His mask. Sansa wanted to touch his mask. She wanted, horribly, to take it off, and to see him for the first time. Tenderly, Sansa put first one hand, and then another, on his shoulders. She put one hand, and then another, on his neck. She placed her left hand, and then her right hand, the flashlight dangling from its loop on her wrist, against the sides of the mask, and then she did nothing. 

Who was Sansa to take this from him? Sandor had never asked anything of Sansa, not once, not in all the years she had known him. Sansa had demanded so much of him. She asked for his presence, for his comfort, for his safekeeping. Could she ask this of him, when he had already given so much? No. No, Sansa tried very hard in her life to never be cruel, and she wasn’t going to start with him. 

Instead, Sansa drew her hands down again to his shoulders, and eased her arms around him. Her fingers spread over the planes of his back as Sansa held Sandor to her. She pressed her forehead to his chest, and then turned her cheek to rest against him on his rotted shirt and massive chest. Her arms pressed firmly against his back as she held him, and Sandor was cold, and he was strong, and he was dead.

***  
That was the night that the dreams started. Sansa fell asleep, bone-tired, and then she was sitting on the dock and Sandor was right next to her. He was dripping and massive and he was looking at her through the mask. His eyes were dark black pits, not even eyes at all, but she knew that he was staring right into her. Sansa stared right back.

Water suddenly dribbled from the bottom of the mask; he had opened his mouth, she realized.

“Little bird?” he croaked, and Sansa woke up trembling.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's gauche to add a chapter, but I was editing the last bit and I thought this would be a good natural narrative break. But I can promise you, the next chapter is the end of this twisted tale. Thank you all again so much for reading! It's been so great to read everyone's comments and to see the love you guys are giving this story!

_A little bird came to visit him one day; twigs for arms and saplings for bones. A skinny little thing and she watched him, floating just beyond the reach of his blade. Red hair in his bloody water and just out of his reach. A scared little bird with twigs for arms and saplings for bones and he could crush her._

_A little bird came to visit him again. She stared at him and stared at him and stared at him and did not come close enough._

_A little bird came again and again. She flitted around his head, she bored her eyes into him, she pinned him in place. The little bird with her little body and the red hair came to him again and again._

_Time was nothing. It had never been anything. There was the fire, there was pain, and fire, and the arc of his blade, and time gave him this over and over, and now there was a little bird. A little bird dove down into his lake to find him. And the little bird would leave him._

_Time began to pass. She would come. The little bird would leave. He had spent so long not being and now a little bird forced him into himself. He found a bubbling pit of rancor and hate in his chest. It brimmed through his chest cavity and ate at his dead heart and he wanted to swing his blade and he wanted to cut his way through all the dirty fucking bastards who put him down here and he wanted the little bird to leave him to the lake and the dank pit he had been buried in._

_The little bird came back though. She kept coming back. The little bird, once, touched his hand, and then she did not come back for a very long time._

_He waited and waited for the little bird to return. She did not._

_He waited and waited for the little bird to return. She did not._

_He imagined swinging his blade through filthy mongrels and shoving the filth they discarded in his lake down their filthy throats._

_He waited and waited and the little bird did return._

_He watched the little bird touch her heart. She smiled at him._

_She had returned._

_The little bird came back._

***

Sansa sat on the dock with Sandor again that next night. She stared at him. The black pits of his eyes stared back. She wasn’t at all sure what to do. Should she speak to him? Should she reach out to him? The machete looked so much more alive in the glinting sun of her dream. 

Yelling came from the cabin behind her— Petyr’s voice. Sansa flinched and did not look behind her. Sandor, her precious body, turned his head towards the sound. There was a crash, and a howl, a scream, terrible and close, from the cabin. Sandor’s grip flexed on the machete. Petyr began to shout her name, distorted and terrible. Sansa squeezed her eyes shut and put her hands on her ears. 

Sandor, abruptly, stood. He towered over her like a monstrous and ancient beast. The water dripped off of him in black rivlets. The rags of his clothes revealed his grey and mottled skin. Sansa gazed up at him. He blocked out the sun. He took a step towards the cabin, where Petyr was howling her name again and again. 

Sansa shot to her feet. “No, don’t, please,” she said in a rush. “Please don’t. It’s awful in there.” She stood in front of Sandor and felt his rage like the haze of a hot day. “We have the whole lake. We don’t have to go in there.”

Sandor stared at her. She wished he would speak again. He had spoken before, hadn’t he? He had called her something. 

Sansa held her hand out to him. “Come with me into the lake,” she murmured.

Her hand hung in the air. Sandor stood still before her, unmoving, dripping. Sansa stepped towards him, into his space; he smelled like the lake, like the sort of earthy musk that comes from the dank and algae. She reached for his hand, the one not preserved with the machete, she slipped her hand into his. Sansa stood on her tiptoes and still could not reach his ear, but she whispered all the same, “we need to leave before the fire starts” and gently tugged him towards the edge of the dock where the dark water of the lake lay waiting. 

At first he did not move. Sandor kept the pits of his eyes fastened on the little cabin and the increasingly desperate shrieks of Sansa’s name. But after a slight tug, he turned to Sansa and the lake. He walked the few steps forward but hesitated at the edge of the wood planks. Sansa paused: “Aren’t things better in the lake?”

Sandor didn’t say anything, and she really wished he would. But then his hand tightened in her grip and he yanked her against his chest. She stumbled, just slightly, and then his arm was around her, pressing her up against the soggy tendrils of his shirt and the heft of his chest. Sandor stepped out, off the dock, and tumbled them both in the familiar cold of the water. In the split moment between the falling and the engulfment, Sansa heard a crack, quick and harsh, and knew that the fire had started. 

They sunk deeper and deeper, much deeper than the water should have been near the dock. Sandor’s grip on her was like a vice. Sansa was pinned, trapped, locked by his arms against his chest, and it was the happiest she had been in a long time. 

The water was black. It was freezing. They sunk so deep. Sansa held her breath and she pressed herself closer to Sandor. She felt small and safe and she wanted to crack open the bones of his chest, crawl between his ribs, and make her home there in the rank trench of his body; a home that fit only her. 

Then the weight of the water began to press down on her, Sansa’s lungs began to ache. They were so far from the surface, and it was so dark that it was impossible to tell what was up, or down, or sideways, or any way at all. She needed to breathe so badly, her lungs felt like they were bulging, her eyes felt compressed, her body a livewire desperate for release.

“Stay with me, little bird,” Sandor croaked and bubbles spewed up from his mouth. She could follow them, break from his grasp, and follow the bubbles up to the surface. 

Sansa dug her fingers into Sandor’s chest, got his skin under her nails, and nodded. _Okay ,_ she thought _, okay_.

***

The next day, Sansa stared at Sandor’s dead body in the lake. It was unchanged. Any hope that she had had for evidence of their dream together was extinguished by his perpetual stagnation. There was nothing to indicate that they had spent the night together in deep black water. Sansa was up close to him, one of her hands wrapped around the chain that anchored him to the bottom of the lake. She wanted to be closer, to feel the weight of his arms pressing her against him again. 

She had worried that the dream would have lessened the physical reality of him. Sansa had been wrong. She knew now, intimately she knew, how the size of her contoured to the size of him. Sansa had never been held, at least not for so long that it mattered, and last night he had held her. It had been a dream, she knew that, but her body felt the memory of being held, her body ached to have it happen again. She wanted him to settle the mass of his body against her, to trap her again, to hold her close and tight and forever. 

But he was just as dead as he had been the day before. 

No pulse ran in his veins, no heartbeat sang from his chest. The decay of his skin, even if unnaturally preserved for nearly a decade, was all the evidence you needed to see how death clung to her body. 

_Can you hear me?_ Sansa thought.

Silence, a deep silence. 

_Are you alive?_ She asked. 

The silence stretched on. 

_I love you ,_ she told him and horribly, nothing happened. 

A deep well of sadness pooled in Sansa’s heart. She wanted so badly for him to shake out his limbs and break his shackle and keep her close. But he didn’t, and Sansa was out of air. She propelled herself to the surface, took a breath, and then bobbed in the water, and blinked back tears. Sandor was below her, just as dead and just as still as ever, no matter how alive he had been in her dream last night. 

***

“Oh,” Sansa said, “You’re back.” She looked at Sandor as he rose from the depths of the lake and waded through the shallow water towards the shore. He dripped and dripped and stopped just in front of her. Sansa was sitting cross-legged on the sandy shore as the cabin burned behind her. There was a lot of screaming. Sandor flinched. Sansa didn’t blame him. 

“I thought maybe the dreams were just a fluke,” she said. “It’s been a few weeks. I thought maybe that I had made you up, but you’re really here, aren’t you?”

Sandor stared down at her, and then looked back at the burning cabin. Sansa frowned. “It’s no good trying to go in. The fire is always too hot. And anyway, they always die, no matter what I do.” Sansa shielded her eyes from the sun so that she could look at him. 

Sandor stood as if frozen, or as a gun dog with a scent, and would not look away from the fire. Sansa, who did not like looking at the fire at all, kept staring at the lake. It startled her when he spoke- she was so used to his silence- and his voice was a rasp: “who’s in there?”

Sansa’s heart rate spiked. She didn’t want to talk about this. No, no she did not want to talk about it at all. Instead, Sansa stood and wiped the sand off of her thighs. “Come into the lake with me,” she said and took a few steps towards the water. 

“I want to know who’s in there,” Sandor repeated. 

Sansa was trembling: “Does it matter? They’re all dead.” Sansa put her hand on his elbow, and she frowned again. “Are you okay?” she asked, because he was also trembling. She noticed now the droplets of water flinging off of the machete as he shook. He didn’t answer her. “Sandor?” she gripped his arm tighter. His body began to spasm, water began to gush from his mouth, pouring out of the holes in the hockey mask. He fell to his knees, pulling Sansa down with him. She pulled his body to her, tried her best to hold him and cradle him as his limbs jerked and he convulsed. Sansa began to cry. “I don’t know how to put the fire out, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she sobbed. 

In desperation, Sansa reached inside herself to the part that she tried very, very hard to pretend didn’t exist— the thing inside of her that could part weeds at a mind’s command, that could shatter china, that could send books flying from their shelves— she reached inside of herself, and tried to hold his limbs down. He was so strong though, and he bucked off her mental grip. The spasms worsened, water gushed out of him like a torrent, and it was so awful. Sansa’s eyes were thick with tears. _Please, please calm down_ , she thought at him, _please, I can help_ and then, terrifyingly, wonderfully, Sansa felt his mind. She felt the rough wall of his consciousness and pushed her way in.

_He was going to kill all of them each person each one who ever hurt him his mom himself the lake his home he was going to kill them all the dirty fucking bastards and the filth of the lake the fire the fire the fire the fire Gregor and the fire and he was going to kill them all every damn fucking teenager and every damn fucking adult and anyone who fucking hurt her he was going to kill them_

Sansa opened eyes that were not her own, opened them to a place that she had never been but that she knew instantly. She was at the camp, and there was a fire all around her, creeping in hot and close. Sansa scrambled to her feet and the machete in her hand scraped against the wood floor. The edges of her vision were dark rimmed, and her breathing came out in huffs and chunks; she was wearing the mask. She was soaked in the lake water. She was powerful, but the fire was coming closer and closer. It loomed in front of her, blocking the door. It was either pass through the fire or die, and she did not want to die. She made her long, awkward limbs step forward and then another step. Her heavy work boots thudded against the floor and despite the heat of the fire, she left wet prints behind her. 

They had thought that they could kill her with fire, like the others had done so long before. They had thought that knocking her out and dousing her with gasoline and lighting the shed up would kill her. They were wrong. She was terrified and she was breathless and just a scared little thing locked up in a closet, but she was more powerful than they could ever dream of being. Sansa walked towards the door, intent on walking through the flames and continuing her mad hunt but she felt a sharp, sudden shove and--

Sansa sat up gasping in bed, the sheets sweaty and clinging to her. 

***

Sansa hoped each night that he would come to her again in a dream. She had spent each day bringing him little gifts, making a garden for him to float above, and had not touched him even once, so that he may believe her apology. She had done such a terrible thing to him, had invaded his mind and memories, and had made him see hers, and she was so deeply sorry. Sansa had only wanted to help. He didn’t come back to her though. She returned to him each day in the lake and tried her best to show her love, but he still did not find her in her sleep.

Not until the last night of summer. 

Sansa had gone to him that day in the lake, and done their goodbye ritual over and over, and had to force herself to leave him. A whole year would go by before she could see him again. She thought, for only the second time in her life, _I love you_ , and hoped that he knew it was the truth. 

That night, he rose out of the water and sat next to her on the dock once again. The yelling hadn’t even started yet. 

“I’m so sorry,” Sansa burst out, as soon as he was settled beside her. “I shouldn’t have done it and I promise that I didn’t mean to. I-”

He put his hand over her mouth. The water wet her lips. 

“Tell me who is in the house,” he said. Sansa tried to yank her head back, but he only tightened his grip. “You come into my head, you kick me around, you force me through fire. A little bird does what she wants. Now you’re going to tell me who is in that house.”

“It’s all of them,” she whispered, muffled even more by the hand over her mouth. “Each one. Mom. Dad. Robb and Arya. Bran and Rickon. And me. I’m in there too. I’m right here, but I’m there too, and I’m burning.”

Sansa raised her tear-welled eyes up to look at him: “You’re burning too. You’re here with me, you’re at the bottom of a lake, and you’re burning up just like me.”

Sandor stared at her, he did that so much. Slowly, Sansa opened her mouth and gently, she bit Sandor’s palm. His grip tightened, barely, but it did. Just as slow, just as achingly slow, he pushed his thumb into her mouth. Sansa bit down again. He stayed like that for a moment, letting her push her teeth into him, before pulling his hand back.

Sansa rose to her knees and stared into the black pits where his eyes should be. She raised her hands, she put them on his shoulders. She leaned in. “I’m going to take your mask off,” she murmured. She lifted her hands, trembling, to the leather strap that ran around the back of his head. Sandor’s hands shot up, grabbing her wrists, the machete falling from his grip. 

The machete rattled on the wooden dock and then, finally, tumbled into the lake with a splash. 

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Sansa told him in as soft of a voice as she could. The yelling had started to come from the cabin. Her family’s screams of pain, and Lysa’s shrieking voice naming her such awful things, and Petyr calling to her, hunting. Soon the fire would start. And then it would all burn down, and the house would collapse and be devoured by the earth. “Don’t you know by now how much I love you?” she asked and smiled down at him. 

Shaking, Sandor lowered his hands, first to his sides, and then balled up in fists, and finally, on her waist. Sansa’s worked the buckle of the mask- it was waterlogged and stiff with disuse. The leather strap pulled through the metal clasp; her fingers dug into his wet hair. She ran a finger across the perimeter of his face to loosen the suction of the mask; Sandor had worn it for so long. His skin tore, just a little, and a drop of fresh, alive, crimson blood dripped onto her hand. 

With a shuddering breath, Sansa pulled off his mask and beheld Sandor. She beheld her body. 

His face was mangled, not from water or from rot, but deeply scarred and an angry red. A burn, she realized, and it consumed his face. She could see the clean bone of his jaw, a twisted ear, an eye trying to escape from its shriveled socket. Oh, but his eyes, she realized, his beautiful eyes. They weren’t tar pits anymore, with the mask gone. They were a shattering blue and they pierced into her. 

She smiled at him: “You have beautiful eyes.” 

He barked a laugh. “The little bird thinks I’m beautiful,” his mouth twitched as he spoke. “A mangled dog with blood on his hands, and you say beautiful.”

Sansa felt her smile grow. “You are my body,” she told him, only to feel the hands on her waist tighten their grip. Words tumbled out of her then, words that Lysa had made her read, but that had never before run true. “You are my body, and where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried; the Lord do so and so to me, if aught but death part thee and me.” 

“Little bird,” he choked, and pulled her head, just slightly too rough, and put her forehead against his. “I wanted to kill you,” he confessed. “The whole first summer, I wanted to run you through with my blade, skewer and rip up your body.”

“But not anymore?” Sansa asked, smiling.

“No, little bird. I won’t hurt you.” His hands moved all across her back, greedy almost, and Sansa let him. “I’ll run through anybody who does,” he said fiercely. “I promise. I’ll kill any person who fucking looks at you.” It was glorious to be touched, to be wanted, to be a cherished and precious thing that nobody else could hurt. Sansa dropped the mask on the deck and put her hands on his face, one side smooth, and one side ruptured. 

“You’re mine,” she told him. “I found you, and you’re mine.”

Sandor nodded, his wet hair sliding under her fingers. And then, he let her go. Sansa’s whole body curled in on itself at the loss of contact. She doubled over, gasping, but he put a finger under chin, and tilted her face to his. 

The scar was horrible, but it was hers. She watched as Sandor waved, and then touched his heart, and then waved. 

_Goodbye. I’ll be back. Goodbye._

Sansa choked, but even she could feel the dream ending; the cabin behind them had collapsed into the maw of the earth. She waved, and then touched her heart, and waved again. She would be back. 

Sansa always came back.

***

Sansa woke up that morning and stared at her ceiling. Her body was hot and pin-pricked, her heart thudding erratically. A whole year without him, but then she would be free from Petyr and Lysa, because she would be an adult. She would even get some of her inheritance. Sansa would be free. 

It was time to start thinking about how to get Sandor out of the lake.


End file.
